Seat belt treatment: Panthers’ Jaycee Horn has been strapping in opposing WRs since college

CHARLOTTE, N.C. — During a late-September game between two south Charlotte high schools, Myers Park cornerback Orlando Brown broke up a deep pass against Ardrey Kell and celebrated with a seat belt gesture after “locking down” the wide receiver.

Watch a football game at any level and you’re likely to see a defensive back punctuating a pass breakup or interception with the seat belt, a celebration that traces its origins to Columbia, S.C., during the COVID-19-shortened season of 2020.

That’s where a pair of starters in the South Carolina secondary — Jaycee Horn and Israel Mukuamu — came up with the move during a walk-through while the Gamecocks were preparing to play at LSU that week.

“A lot of guys were saying ‘strap’ at the time. So I had just started saying seat belt. Like (when you) seat belt, you strap. We both were thinking about a gesture to do. And we came up with the across the chest,” Horn said.

“We were going to do it whoever got the first stop of the game. We did it in practice all week. When we did it in practice, it was just a funny thing. And then when I got a stop in the game, I just did it in the game. And it took off from there.”

After defending a first-quarter fade pass in the end zone intended for LSU freshman tight end Arik Gilbert, Horn pulled an imaginary seat belt over his chest and snapped it into place. The Tigers would go on to win 52-24. But when Horn’s personal trainer posted a video of the play on social media after the game, a new move was born.

Let him know! @I_Am_OD3 pic.twitter.com/k4wDyrPH5s

— Jaycee Horn (@jayceehorn_10) January 3, 2021

Four years later, Horn has noticed everyone from Pop Warner players to women’s basketball standouts doing the seat belt after defensive stops. Green Bay Packers cornerback Jaire Alexander has added his own flourish to what he calls the sword. In fact, Alexander claims to have started the craze, which Horn adamantly disputes.

“You can check,” said Horn, the Carolina Panthers’ fourth-year corner. “The first time anybody ever did the seat belt we were playing LSU in Baton Rouge my last year. Go see if you see a seat belt celebration anywhere before that game.”

Mukuamu, a safety for the Dallas Cowboys, appreciates how widespread the celebration has become. But like Horn, he wants to make sure folks understand its history.

“It’s worldwide. I think that’s like the first thing DBs want to do once they get a bat-down. They want to put the seat belt on,” he said. “But remember: Seat belt started at South Carolina.”

That Horn would be at the forefront of an iconic celebration makes sense. The 24-year-old comes by it naturally.

During a nationally televised game at the Superdome in 2003, New Orleans Saints receiver Joe Horn — Jaycee’s father — famously celebrated the second of his four touchdowns in a rout of the New York Giants by snatching a flip phone he’d stashed in the padding around the goal post and pretending to phone home. Horn’s choreographed call earned him a fine from the NFL of $30,000 — the same amount levied against Michael Thomas when the Saints’ receiver paid homage to Horn with his own cell phone celebration 15 years later.

Jaycee Horn said he’s not in the same class as his dad when it comes to showmanship. “He was way more splashy than me,” he said. “Receivers be divas, so he was definitely one of them.”

The younger Horn credits his dad for instilling in him a game-day demeanor that is equal parts confidence and aggression.

“A lot of that comes from him and my older brother. That’s just the style he wanted us to play with,” Horn said. “He damn near wanted us to think of it as war when we stepped between the lines. That’s the mentality he had, and I try to play with that, too.”

Jaycee Horn has defended a career-high 10 passes this season. (Photo: Carolina Panthers)

Joe Horn settled in an exclusive community in suburban Atlanta after ending his career with the Falcons. There was a field that hosted youth league games minutes from his house, but Joe had his boys play in the more rugged Metro Atlanta league that produced such NFL stars as Cam Newton and Eric Berry.

“This league plays rain, sleet or snow in the hood,” Joe Horn told The Athletic in 2021. “I’ll say that with a capital H — in the Hood. And (Jaycee) grew up with that attitude.”

Horn and Mukuamu, a South Carolina native who moved to Louisiana before his senior year of high school, arrived in Columbia in 2018. Both played as freshmen and were close on and off the field.

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Midway through their junior season, the start of which was delayed for a month due to COVID, the two started kicking around the idea of a signature celebration.

“Throughout the whole year, Jaycee just kept saying like car seat, seat belt, whatever. And then one day in walkthroughs, I just did like this,” said Mukuamu, showing a reporter the across-the-chest gesture. “It was right before the LSU game. We were like, ‘It’s hard.’ The first time it ever came out was the LSU game. He ended up doing it first. … It just took off.”

Not long after Horn debuted it, Mukuamu followed with another seat belt after intercepting Tigers quarterback TJ Finley and returning the pick 56 yards to set up a Gamecocks’ field goal.

The move might have remained an inside joke between Horn and Mukuamu had Oliver Davis, an Atlanta-based defensive backs coach, not put a video of Horn’s first seat belt on his Instagram story.

“He posted it and it was blowing up,” Horn said. “All the kids in Atlanta were doing it. There were other college kids doing it.”

Horn and Mukuamu only played two more games for South Carolina following the LSU loss. After Will Muschamp was fired in November after a 2-5 start to the 10-game schedule, both defensive backs opted out to prepare for the NFL draft. Horn revealed at his pro day he had several family members who contracted COVID, including an aunt who died of complications from it.

Matt Rhule attended Horn’s pro day in Columbia, where the junior enhanced his draft status by running a 4.37-second 40, pumping out 19 reps on the 225-pound bench press and posting a 41.5-inch vertical jump. A month later the Panthers took Horn with the No. 8 pick, one spot ahead of Alabama cornerback Patrick Surtain.

Before Horn’s rookie year, he and his agent Trey Smith tried to trademark the seat belt, but were told a move or a dance can’t be trademarked. Horn had printed some T-shirts of him doing the seat belt for friends and family, but his idea to launch a seat belt-styled clothing line died with the trademark ruling.

“After that I started seeing other sports doing it. Then they put it on Madden. I’m like, ‘Damn, they done took my celly,’” Horn said. “It is what it is. It still brought joy to me to see everybody doing it.”

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Mukuamu has taken the same approach, even when Cowboys rookie cornerback Caelen Carson, a fifth-round pick from Wake Forest, showed up in Dallas with the X handle of “@walkinseatbelt.”

“I just let people ride with it,” Mukuamu said. “We’re all DBs at the end of the day. So it’s just something cool to do.”

When Derwin James broke up Joe Burrow’s Hail Mary pass on the final play of Sunday night’s NFL game, the Los Angeles Chargers’ safety ran off the field doing the seat belt. Safety Nick Emmanwori has kept the tradition going at South Carolina, while Brown — the Myers Park corner and son of Chicago Bears offensive coordinator Thomas Brown — is among the high school players strapping opponents up.

“The cool thing for me is I’ve seen it in some basketball games, women’s basketball players doing it,” Horn said. “I’ve seen little kids doing it on social media (in) Little League games.

Alexander, the Charlotte native and two-time Pro Bowler, suggested he was the inspiration for all the NFL defensive backs copying the move.

“Everybody’s doing my celebration,” Alexander told Green Bay reporters last fall. “Man, c’mon, man. Might as well just put on 23 jerseys around the league, man. Damn.”

Jaire Alexander on the Packers CB group: “It’s gonna be Strap City. We might as well go ahead and start marketing that right now. We just waiting on 21 (Eric Stokes) to get back.” pic.twitter.com/Ie2FYvLy6R

— Matt Schneidman (@mattschneidman) July 31, 2023

Alexander’s move is slightly different. He raises his arms to the sky and then brings them down across his chest to his opposite hip, as if putting a sword back in a sheath. Alexander corrected reporters last year who referred to it as a seat belt.

“No,” he said. “It’s a sword.”

So maybe there’s room in NFL secondaries for both the seat belt and the sword.

“He does his own. They do it like where they point to the sky and then strap,” Horn said. “But that came from South Carolina, man. Israel Mukuamu and Jaycee Horn. Them the two guys that created the seat belt.”

Panthers special teams captain Sam Franklin doesn’t do either. After making plays in punt coverage, Franklin puts his hands at waist level and pushes them toward the ground, indicating his opponents are “little kids.” But Franklin likes what Horn’s celebration stands for.

“You’ve gotta go out there and have a great rep to put a seat belt on somebody,” he said. “The seat belt is basically saying, ‘I secured your kid home safe.’ That’s what the seat belt’s for. You’ve gotta escort them back to the sideline safely.”

After a couple of injury-plagued seasons, Horn is having the best year of his career. With seven games remaining, Horn already has surpassed his previous season high for passes defensed with 10. His 45.8 completion percentage allowed ranks fourth among defensive backs with a minimum of 250 coverage snaps, according to Next Gen Stats.

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So Horn has had reason to celebrate, but the irony is he rarely throws on the seat belt these days. By his estimate, he’s done it three times this season, including after a pass breakup against former teammate DJ Moore during a Week 5 loss at Chicago.

The unique move he and Mukuamu came up with in the shadow of Williams-Bryce Stadium has gotten too popular for Horn’s liking.

“I don’t do it no more like that ‘cause they took the sauce. It ain’t the same no more when everybody’s doing it,” Horn said. “It’s gotta be like a special (play).”

Horn isn’t retiring the seat belt, just saving it for big moments. So buckle up: You never know when it’s coming.

(Top photo of Horn: Brooke Sutton / Getty Images)